Daniel Firoozi

I use compulsory schooling laws (CSL) that bind on birthdate to identify the impact of high school education in Florida & California on partisanship. People born before the cutoff start school younger & must remain in HS longer before they can legally drop out. GOP affiliation ⬇️

Also the only time in my life the race/ethnicity category on a survey had “Persian” as an option.

The best thing about the New York Times live polls in 2018 was that I got called to answer one of their polls while I was watching the same poll be conducted live in CA-45 at the time. They estimated my odds of voting at 84%, which was maybe a bit low given the circumstances. 🤣

Honestly, the huge focus on getting into a good college, PhD program, Goldman Sachs, etc. seems to reflect a deep disbelief in the eventual efficiency of labor markets. Nobody seems to believe any more that if you just develop skills, the skills will pay off eventually

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: federalreserve.gov/newsevents/spe…

A tuition-free college program increased a receiving student's voter turnout rate by 4–12 percentage points in 2020, also increasing Biden's margin. RD aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

Awards to top grads boost wages ~7%, with effects concentrated among those from lower-reputation colleges. Just Accepted new paper by Matias Busso, Sebastián Montaño, and Juan Muñoz-Morales @juansebastmunoz zurl.co/4wx6Z

Attending a Boston charter school boosts voting, likely due to increases in noncognitive skills. Just Accepted new paper by Sarah R. Cohodes and James J. Feigenbaum zurl.co/NbRi4

Excited to share my JMP! Do academic fields of study causally influence students' political preferences? Through what mechanisms? And what are the broader civic implications? 👇 #EconJobMarket #EconTwitter Joint with @matankoler (PhD @HebrewU, now postdoc @MITEcon)

The last time I posted the income relationship to presidential vote among White respondents to the @electionstudies ANES, people asked for additional estimates among all voters. Updated estimates here:

🍎🦡 I'm recruiting a PhD student in Ed Policy (fall '26) at @UWMadEducation! Come work with me on college access, admissions, & fin aid in our top-ranked, fully-funded program. I’m especially excited for this student to immediately join our direct admissions RCT team.

Enjoying chatting with @PBSWI about @UniversitiesWI's Direct Admit program / The Wisconsin Guarantee, my work on direct admissions, and early fall enrollment figures. @UWMadEducation @WCER_UW @IRP_UW pbswisconsin.org/watch/here-and…

🚨 I’m officially on the job market this year! 🚨 My JMP speaks to a key question in political science: once elected, do racial minorities govern differently from their white counterparts? I study this subject in the context of local land-use policy in American cities.

The value added by election forecasters is mainly to aggregate polls. If we compare the raw polling average to @NateSilver538 Silver Bulletin and @SplitTicket_ . The raw polling average I posted on November 4th performs as well as forecasts that incorporate more variables.

Before the 2024 election, I put out a simple forecast that accounted for the within-state, across time polling errors that have persisted since at least 2000. The results are in: A simple adjusted polling average outperforms the two best election forecasters from 2024.

Did you know that your siblings can influence whether you vote? Well, now you do! Social scientists have long known that parents influence kids' political socialization. And we have some new evidence that the opposite occurs too--kids influence parents. But, we have little causal evidence of peer effects/spillovers from one "ultimate peer"--siblings--to another. In our new paper, we use a regression discontinuity design based on election eligibility and a large sample of millions of sibling pairs drawn from national education administrative records matched to voter files to show that siblings influence each others' voting patterns. This effect goes from older siblings to younger siblings AND from younger siblings to older siblings. The effects are in line with other effect estimates in the literature. Feedback welcome!

These effects materialize when students are still in school and college and persist well into their 50s. On balance I find that peer socialization likely plays an important role in the observed effects. Full Paper: DanielFiroozi.com/workingpapers

I also make use of a top percent admission policy at UC campuses called eligibility in the local context (ELC). Essentially, students in the top 4% of their HS class had an admissions advantage. They end up less likely to register to vote as Republicans when they reach age ~30.

The impact of high school is larger for whites, men, and Gen Z, but substantial effects also exist for women, people of color, and older people stretching back to Gen Xers born in 1969. A rough rule of thumb is that every year of schooling reduces GOP affiliation by 2 pp.

I use compulsory schooling laws (CSL) that bind on birthdate to identify the impact of high school education in Florida & California on partisanship. People born before the cutoff start school younger & must remain in HS longer before they can legally drop out. GOP affiliation ⬇️

Does educational attainment impact partisanship? Yes. #EconTwitter In my paper “Education and Partisanship” I use admin data on millions of voters and multiple RD designs to show that education reduces GOP affiliation across generations, settings, demographics, & institutions.